The Recluse
by Jammie-Bro
Summary: The girl sits there, always gazing out of the window, waiting. A false prisoner in a mental institution. Noone is able to make her talk...


_**Recluse**_

_**A lil' one-off**_

_**By Jammie-bro**_

_She never spoke. It seemed 'she'd lost her voice', as the falsely chirpy and over-optimistic nurses would say, at the beginning. They had changed their tune now, but would never show it to her unresponsive face. Some called her the porcelain doll, as she sat motionless at the window from dawn 'till dusk. Nobody knew what to do with her, so they regarded her with the notice she gave the outside world; polite, discorded, unfading interest. Gazing longingly at the ever-changing seasons, day after day, week after week, she radiated loneliness. _

Green Acres Residential Home 

For Disabled Patients

Fara Neilson straightened her uniform hurriedly and discarded the polythene gloves she loathed wearing everyday. Returning the files of three of her patients to Poppy Branstone, the young receptionist, she entered a dull brown door marked with a tarnished silver plaque.

**JOSEPH CARTER Ph.D., B.Sc.**

**HEAD DOCTOR, MANAGER, SUPERVISOR**

Fara sat down quickly on the hard-backed chair, pushing the clipboard onto a dusty desk complete with bored doctor sitting behind it.

"Sir, I have to speak to you about patient #012. Please, just look at her file- she doesn't seem to show any of the signs of recovery we were hoping for, because there is simply nothing wrong with her."

The spectacled doctor scratched at his greying hair and sighed.

"Miss Neilson, I have spoken at length to Dr. Jordan about this case. We have diagnosed no disease with patient #012 like the other patients. Although she has improved from her rageoholic period we have seen in her files from a few months ago!"

"But Doctor Carter, there is nothing wrong with her! Her blood tests are constant, there is no wavering heartbeat, no memory loss-"

"You are right in what you say about her physical appearance, Fara, and I am sure that her memory is psychologically sound, but it is her lack of speech and strange resilience to the drugs we have been prescribing that will keep her in here!"

"Resilience to the drugs? That isn't in the file!" Fara exclaimed.

Doctor Carter gritted his teeth and hastily lowered his voice.

"It doesn't need to be, and if we added it in the enquiry at the board of health would be rigorous! We don't want this patient to be made into some sort of lab rat-"

"That's still not a valid reason to be keeping her here! Look at the monks who live in recluse! You don't see THEM in a mental asylum-"

"THIS ESTABLISHMENT IS NOT A MENTAL ASYLUM!" He fumed, temple pulsing.

"Have I come at a bad time?"

A blonde, bushy haired woman in a matron's uniform stuck her head around the door. Doctor Carter exhaled heavily and shook his head. The woman bustled in, holding yet another file.

"Just informing you I've finished my checks, and patient #027, Mrs. Hartfields, has been complaining about patient #012 again. She saw the flowers being taken out of her room. It took me simply ages to calm the old dear down! She was all of a fluster- again! Well I said to her-"

"I'm sorry, Doris- flowers? What's this all about; I forget..."

"Oh how could you forget? I told you only last week! Every vase of flowers I take into that poor girl's room appear to wilt and die after just a day! I take the freshest flowers, move them about in the room, make sure the air conditioning isn't high, and neither is the temperature, ensure the water is oxygenated, etc etc, but as sure as the night will follow the day those flowers are dead by dusk! I don't know what is wrong with that child; she's been moved from place to place, even to specialists in Europe, but no-one can make her talk or respond! Not to mention what that nice nurse in Prague told me... about that patient...."(She gestured frantically in the direction of patient #012's room, her speech becoming faster and more panicked,) "She said that the girl would shout and persist that she was in league with wizards and witches! She insisted that those strange occurrences in London last June were the work of some head honcho leader of forces of darkness -or something along those lines. Well I don't know, I had to check vigorously that it was the right patient she was talking about! But then she told me of what had happened at quite a few of the institutions that girl was moved into.... Hmm...."

Doris was completely oblivious to the gaping stares she was getting from the other two people in the room whilst she rambled to herself. When she finally trailed off Fara had to prompt her;

"What happened in the institutions?"

Doris snapped out of her stupor, in which she was gazing absent-mindedly at a crude watercolour hanging on the wall. "Oh, well, the nurse told me that although the highest level of security was installed in every institution the girl found herself in, somehow every now and then she would be found, in the middle of the night, standing at the window or sliding doors like she does every day. But the difference would be that, impossibly, the window or door would be wide open, or even have disappeared."

"What?" cried Dr. Carter, "Disappeared? How?"

Doris shook her head. "No-one knows. The security cameras showed nothing- they would blank out- yet only for a few seconds. When the footage returned the windows would have disappeared completely, frames and all. The strangest thing was that the girl would just stand there, still as a statue. She had the easiest opportunities to escape- but why didn't she? I know _I_ would. There's definitely something strange about that girl..."

And with that, Doris bustled out of the office, shaking her head and mumbling to herself. Dr. Carter's jaw was hanging open, trying vainly to form words of explanation. He obviously had no idea of those occurrences before Doris's outburst of information, which was unknown for a doctor of his stature.

Fara slipped quietly out of the office, leaving the doctor mouthing as soundlessly as patient #012. Her brow furrowed in thought, she made her way back to Poppy at the entrance desk.

"Hey, Ms. Neilson," Greeted the dark-haired receptionist, "What's up? Doris just came 'outta that office whisp'rin like somethin' possessed!"

Fara sighed heavily. "It's all this business with patient #012. I can't understand why she's been moved around so much- or why they won't just let her go. It's causing me so much _stress!_"

Poppy smiled sadly, reaching out to pat Fara's hand sympathetically, "I know. You've worked so 'ard on this patient an' 'er case. But ye' can't let it get to ya'; you've got a family to worry about- an' besides, they'll be comin' to get 'er soon!"

Fara's head snapped up. "**What? **Leaving? Who's coming to get her?" She spluttered.

Poppy's face paled and her optimistic smile drained from her features. Her lipstick-clad jaw disjointedly fumbled for the right words like someone with a large, choking gob-stopper lodged in their orifice. "I was jus' being... hopeful-Yeah, hopeful. I mean, it's only a matta' o' time before they move 'er again, isn't it?"

The nurse nodded absently, her eyes darting about the white-walled entrance hall. They came to rest on two feather quills (one scarlet and the other a buttercup yellow), held in a pen-pot behind Poppy's desk, accompanying a small ink-bottle containing bright blue ink.

"Oh, they're nice!" Fara exclaimed, "I didn't know people still made those kind of things- where did you get them from? Stratford - upon –Avon?"

At that point Mrs. Hartfields began making a racket again, Doris rushing out from her duties to tend to her. Fara momentarily decided that the day was far too long, so handed in patient #012's file to a slightly bewildered Poppy and left for home.

Dusk had fallen upon the hushed building, with the patients succumbing to (a sometimes drug-induced) sleep. Shadows lengthened, stretching across the wooded grounds and into the building. The crescent moon hung silently in a forbidding sky, pearly rays tickling the girl's lonely upturned face. For a moment she blinked, snapping toward what she thought was a figure stealing across the verdant lawn. She blinked again- there was nothing there.

"Come on now dear, into bed." The nurse had entered without her even noticing. The middle- aged attendant clicked on the light switch, filling the barren white room with false electric light. The girl blinked again, her eyes burning. She noiselessly crossed the room and climbed onto the bed, slipping her legs beneath the starched covers but refusing to lie down. Her face showed nothing but vacancy and the nurse knew that the girl was acting too stubborn, or too empty-headed to heed any requests. The nurse shook her head. This girl was not empty-headed at all, as the attendant had heard her muttering ceaselessly whilst asleep. The slumbering girl would ream off capitals of every country in the world, full paragraphs of strange instructions in full Latin, pi to at least a hundred decimal places and other such complicated things like they were no more than reciting the alphabet. It puzzled the attendant, but she never mentioned it to her superiors.

"Goodnight, then." Said the nurse, leaving the room, the stubborn girl remaining sat on the bed.

As soon as the door had clicked shut and the nurses' retreating footsteps had finished echoing in the empty corridor, the girl slid back out of bed. She crossed the room noiselessly and drew back the thin curtains, and returned to sit in front of the window. To an observer, she may have looked alike someone who has fallen asleep with their eyes fully open. But although the girl let the hours pass without moving a muscle, a million thoughts a minute were shooting through her brain. It seemed to be the only organ that hadn't given up on her. She hardly ate, breathed or moved at all; her heart broken, yet somehow still hopeful. It seemed impossible that they would ever come for her now...-

Click.

Crack!

BANG.

It all happened in such quick succession that the girl didn't know where to look. Her head jerked towards the door where someone was turning the handle, then a large apparating Crack sounded and a familiar figure appeared outside the window; and the BANG came from the third person removing the window- by force. She was clambering to her feet when a voice sounded behind her.

"I've been told you've lost the power of speech! Maybe I've come to rescue the wrong person..."

Wheeling around, the girl's face was plastered with the first smile in months. She threw herself upon her rescuer, happy tears streaming. She fell into the inescapable gaze of his and hardly heard him whisper "I'm sorry it took so long to find you. I've missed you."

Though a thousand words she'd love to say were pouring across her tongue, she simply replied "I missed you too."

And with that, the porcelain doll left her prison in the arms of her knight. The moon was a smile upon them and the stars crackled in the sky. By the time the alarm was raised the girl had disappeared into the night. And while doctors and the authorities were swarming upon Green Acres, gathering around the absent window and where the absent girl should have been, Poppy Branstone smiled to herself. She removed the security camera tape from the machine, dropping it into an envelope. Tied to the leg of an owl, the only evidence of the girl's departure was also swallowed by the progressive darkness of that September evening.

**END**

_Jammies' Notes: Hiya! It shocked me when I saw how long it had been since I've written anything. It's been AGES AND AGES! Anyway, this one-off can be whatever you want it to be, which I like because it's something new for me. The characters can be whoever you want them to be, even though when I wrote this I had certain people in mind. Poppy Branstone, by the way, is not a character in HP, although in my mind she's related to Eleanor Branstone, who's a pupil at Hogwarts- (I think she's in Hufflepuff.)_

_Fara Neilson is based on a friend of mine and all other characters are completely my own making- I think. If you think I could have improved anything, or have any comments, please review. If a lot of people would like me to write a prequel and show how patient #012 ended up in the asylum I'll (of course) comply, but it would reveal who she is, and I'm not sure if you would like that, as it may not be who you wish it to be. That's why I like things to be left to the imagination, and although the HP films were very well done, I'm not too fond of them for that reason. Anyway, I'm rambling on now, so I'd better finish off. With thanks to Story645, who faithfully tells me every time I make stupid mistakes. Thanks for reading!_

_Jammie-Bro._


End file.
